Rita Agnes Poultney

Rita Agnes Poultney was born in March 1924 in Bay City Michigan to Joseph Sauve and Agnes Sauve (nee Robinson), both of whom were also born in Bay City. Joseph was the scion of a French Canadian family who had come over the northern border in the early days, and Agnes Robinson, the lovely belle of an Irish clan who had likewise decided to try a new life in a new country. It worked out pretty well - Rita had three sisters - Mary June, Helen and Therese - and four brothers, Bernard, Norman, Harold and Joe. They lived in a big white clapboard farmhouse, which is still there on McClellan Road in Bay City. The rambunctious kids had all kinds of quaint 1920s and 1930s childhood adventures, playing broom ball, taunting wolverines, and frolicking gleefully in the beautiful Upper Peninsula sunlight during those Hiawathan summers of yore. There on the lapping, sandy shores of Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron, she watched fishing boats and grain trawlers ply the waters hauling the Great Lakes' bounty, and saw stevedores laboring on the docks, decades before the world knew of Bay City as the birthplace of Madonna! When the war happened, Rita joined without hesitation. Her early school experience where the nuns would hit you with rulers certainly made her tough, and she became one of the first female US Marines. She filled out a critical role stateside, inspecting parts and planes for defective mechanisms, no doubt saving many lives alongside the Rosie-the-Riveter counterparts who built liberty ships and folded parachutes for our servicemen during that difficult time. Along the way she caught the eye of a dashing Air Force pilot named Jack who allegedly painted her name on the side of his plane, known as "Rita's Wagon." Returning to Bay City after the war, she dreamed of other lands, in particular ones that weren't so cold in the winter. Hence she headed south, following her like-minded snowbird brother Harold to the Shadow Mountain district of Phoenix, AZ! There she romped among the kit foxes, petroglyphs and saguaro cacti to the big-band strains of Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong and Guy Lombardo, acquiring a lifelong taste for big-band and show-tune music which she would later perform as a suburban mom some twenty years hence on in the Bay Area. She enjoyed her time in Phoenix, working in the classified ads section of a local fishwrap, and learning urban legends of the Sidehill Gougers, those elusive goatlike denizens of Shadow Mountain with legs significantly shorter on one side than the other, which allowed them to move very quickly on steep hills, but only in one direction. She said Phoenix was lovely but, alas, way too hot in the summer. So she moved to San Francisco, where the climate was juuuuust right, and found herself in that Beatnik paradise of the early 1960s, surrounded by beret-wearing, turtleneck-clad poets drinking double-double half-cafs and talking about how Kerouac and Gary Snyder were right on, maaaan. Yet it was a square who won her heart - one Thomas A. Poultney, a gruff yet erudite native San Franciscan, WW2 veteran (Merchant Marines, Pacific Theater) who was then a first mate engine-roomer studying engineering at Heald College. His tastes ran more to James Joyce and Ray Bradbury than to J.D. Salinger and Allen Ginsburg, but they made a great pair. He was also a big-band fan, and along with their friends they embarked on a years-long romantic city life of dancing, dining, drinking at "clip joints" along Fisherman's Wharf ("Yeccch! Too touristy! And honestly, the way they watered down those drinks and ripped you off for those shrimp cocktails! Jeez to Petes!!" she recalled years later over a bowl of onion soup at her Foster City residence). Eventually her and Thomas got serious, as they saying went, and had two ebullient sons - Walter and John. They would walk these energetic and darting boys down to Aquatic Park on dog leashes (!) to throw sticks in the water and look at the Golden Gate Bridge (where Rita's husband would later be a chief engineer) But even in the mid-1960s the traffic on Van Ness Avenue was too worrisome to walk boys alongside the teamster-piloted turnip wagons and belching MUNI buses before the green era, so they made the conscious and voluntary decision to move "Down The Peninsula" to Foster City. In the mid 1960s only a few dozen houses stood in Foster City, which is now a densely packed Silicon Valley bedroom community of some 35,000 souls. Rita, Tom, Walter and John were among the first 100 residents in that brand-new city, which had a large selection of open gravel pits, sheer drops into newly dug waterways and lively afternoon dust storms. Rita made the most of it and immediately made friends with the other newcomers, joining the Foster City Newcomer's Club, and other civic organizations. She and Tom would host way-out soirees in their midcentury-modern, flat-roof Eichler pad, downing Harvey Wallbangers and deviled eggs while wearing colorful muumuus, groovy tie-tacks and novelty sweaters. She was an early environmentalist, piloting her 1975 5-speed Dodge Colt wagon on shortcuts through corner parking lots to save gas and stick it to OPEC. As Rita's sons grew up, she helped the whole family maintain a comfortable, welcoming home. She was not above chasing John out to the school-bus stop in her bathrobe and curlers, beseeching him to finish his orange juice in front of his new-wave friends. She also encouraged Walter's burgeoning interest in mechanics by allowing him to "customize" the family cars, and once completed John's paper route when he spaced out and went water-skiing with his friends at Lake Berryessa, forgetting all about his duty to the news-hungry neighborhood in those pre-internet days. She performed often throughout Foster City and San Mateo in the "Skinny Minnies," a singing group that would put on Gilbert-and-Sullivan costumed numbers and blythe tunes such as "Doin' What Comes Naturally" and "I Can't Say No." She also maintained a high position in the local Sew-n-Chat organization, doling out three-cheese fondue, shrimp and cucumber canapés and bundt cake to those fussy, gossipy ladies in the front room as needed. She took this position seriously and would often begin cleaning the house up to a week before hosting a Sewing Circle. Rita was ecstatic to welcome her grandchildren, Tom and Nate, in late 2005, and talked nonstop about how much she adored them and loved being a grandmother. She was predeceased by her siblings Mary June, Helen, Therese, Bernard, Norman and Harold, and by husband Thomas in 1987. She is survived by sons Walter and John, grandsons Thomas and Nathaniel, and brother Joe of Bay City, MI. There will be a graveside memorial service on October 22nd, 2021 at 1pm at Golden Gate National Cemetery, 1300 Sneath Ln, San Bruno, CA 94066, Section CA-14, A-5. Military honors will be rendered for the graveside service 10/22 at 1pm. In lieu of flowers, the family prefers donations to the Alzheimer's Association, at alz.org.